Cattle loss through theft and fraudulent invoicing, fictitious death loss, under reported livestock on BLM managed lands, and low compliance with federal laws for tracking imported livestock cause multimillion dollar losses to cattle ranchers, bankers, and taxpayers. Several issues face the livestock industry in the United States.
First, cattle theft and fraud is at an all-time high, costing insurers millions of dollars per incident, and there are many high-value incidents reported each year. Most theft cases go unsolved, and there is no traceability across state lines, so stolen cattle in one state can be transported across state boundaries and be sold at full price using a stolen tag.
Second, stock have a high cost to management in many aspects of production, such as feeding, immunization tracing, disease quarantine, herding for counting and identification, and many other area. Additionally, source location is unknown for diseased or contaminated animal food products, which causes widespread recall of food products. Food recall has a high cost association and high social impact to end consumers. In addition to these issues, there is a market demand whereby consumers want to know the source of their food purchased at food markets.
There is a need in the art for an improved system of tracking cattle.